Broken but Beautiful

Why Church is Still Worth It

Joseph P. Conway

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781725271470
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

American church participation has plummeted in recent decades. Abuse scandals and hypocrisy hang in the air. Weekly, I talk to friends and neighbors who have left church, even as many still identify as Christians. I get what they're saying. When I consider the pain that so many have experienced in church life, the body of Christ sure seems broken. It's no wonder many don't find church to be worth it. But maybe there's more to the story. As a child, my family experienced deep crisis. I felt alone and vulnerable. Into that void, the church stepped in. I discovered a family, a people that have my back and forever changed my life. Even now, I see tangible ways the church works for the common good. The church possesses a resilient beauty that continually pushes through the brokenness. If we love Jesus, we have to eventually ask what Jesus loves. Surprising to me at times, Jesus loves the church, despite her brokenness. If we learn to see what Jesus sees, we'll discover a powerful, often untapped means towards human flourishing. No other social group offers what the church offers. Yes, the church is broken, but there's more. She's beautiful.

Section 1

Broken

1

Who Is My Mother?

A few months after I turned eight, my mother passed away in a car accident. Up to this moment, I had an idyllic childhood. I grew up in in the country, on the edge of the suburbs. I knew all my neighbors. On summer days, my mother sent me outside barefooted and shirtless for a day of running and exploring in the woods. There were two simple rules. First, don’t go inside, because then I wouldn’t be able to hear if she called me. Second, don’t climb an unfamiliar fence. Like rule one, this kept me within shouting earshot.

I built clubhouses. I shot arrows into hay bales. I helped my dad build a barn. I climbed trees. I played Pee Wee baseball. A few years ago, my wife framed a picture for me. Probably around age seven, I’m in the center of the photo clothed in my blue Royals baseball uniform. My father stands on one side as the coach. My mother stands on the other side in her “Team Mom” shirt. My brother joins us in the picture, likely as a batboy or helper even though he played on an older team. I keep this picture on my nightstand. I think of it as my Eden picture. It’s what my life looked like before the fall.

On two summers, in 1985 and 1986, we went on month-long RV trips with my maternal grandparents. The six of us (my parents, grandparents, older brother and me) piled into the RV together. As Dad drove and Gramps held the map, my older brother and I rode in an upper compartment with a window. We had a perfect view of all that lay ahead. Sometimes, we’d sit at the kitchen table with Mom and Granny. Mom would play cards with us, and Granny would read us Louisa May Alcott books. I got to see the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Statue of Liberty, Niagara Falls, and the Rocky Mountains. Still, my favorite part was simply riding my bike and swimming at the little campgrounds along the way. By the end of the second trip, I’d been to over forty states. Life was perfect.

About a month later, my mother died. Our family had driven to Alabama on Labor Day weekend to visit my paternal grandfather. A young driver in the other lane swerved into our 1985 Toyota Corolla. My mother died instantly, but I didn’t know it for hours. The rest of us survived, even as my father experienced serious injuries. He had to stay in Alabama for a week. My maternal grandparents came and took us back home. We stayed with church friends for a couple of days and then back at our house with my grandparents. I remember my Aunt Anna May came in from Kansas City to help out.

I’ll never forget the day of the funeral, which my father missed due to his injuries. I sat there on the front row with my brother and grandparents. The church was packed. The preacher said some nice and encouraging things. I had to dress up, which wasn’t my favorite thing at that age. All of my best friends came to the funeral. They didn’t know what to say, which was fine because I didn’t really want to talk about it. I remember the burial. I’d watch the casket being lowered, and then I’d take a break and play tag. It all felt like a fog. It was not how I thought my life would go.

Like so many others who experience tragedy, we tried to figure out how to continue on and do life one day at a time. I missed my mother dearly. But on top of that, I just felt incredibly lonely. My father and brother were rocks during that time and remain my heroes. Still, as we grieved and tried to figure out what life would be, I felt isolated and alone.

For several years, I sought language to describe my thoughts and emotions. Eventually, I found those words in an unlikely place. You may remember the romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. I know, this sounds like an unlikely place. Early in the film, a recently widowed Tom Hanks calls into a radio talk show. After sharing his loss, the therapist/host asks him, “What are you going to do?” His response: “Well, I’m gonna get out of bed every morning . . . breathe in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won’t have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out . . . and, then after a while, I won’t have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while.” I probably saw that movie seven or eight years after my loss, and instantly I thought, “Yep, that’s what it’s like. That’s what I went through.”

Have you been there? As an adult, I now know I’m not that unique. My social worker friends refer to this as an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE for short). So many kids experience these. Moreover, we’ve all experienced extreme brokenness and painful disappointments. We have all loved and lost. Regular life free of huge tragedies remains challenging and difficult. Bills, debts, tornadoes, wildfires, gun violence, racism, abuse, depression, opioids, pandemics—you name it. Life is hard. How do we cope? How do we get through it all? How do we heal the pain of our loneliness? How do we find, form, and keep family?

I still remember the first thing I uttered when told of my mother’s passing. For hours after the accident, I feared the worst. I kept asking nurses at the hospital for details of my mother, but they kept putting me off. Finally, I fell asleep in a hospital room with fluorescent lighting beside my brother. Hours later, they woke me up, for my grandparents and uncle had arrived from Tennessee. Alongside them, a chaplain broke the news I’d expected. I’m not proud of my immediate reaction. I’m only being honest. A survival instinct kicked in. These words came out of me: “Who will be my mother?”

I couldn’t comprehend surviving life without a mother, yet she was gone. What was I to do? I quickly realized the fragility of the family system. What happens when we place our foundational trust in our immediate family, only to lose them? Deep down, I understood I needed a family that could survive and outlast the brokenness of this world. I needed stability that included and yet exceeded my immediate family. For several years, I feared that something might happen to my father. I assume other kids in similar situations would have felt the same thing. I’d stand outside my elementary school waiting to be picked up in the afternoon. If my dad was just a couple of minutes late (which rarely happened), I began to panic. My brother would always tell me not to worry. He said Dad would come, and he did.

Still, in desperate conviction, I understood I needed a broader, larger family. Who would be my mother? My grandmother nurtured me with consistent love and steadfast devotion. A few years later, my dad remarried, and my second mom has enriched my life in innumerable ways. Yet in my life, the answer to this question has been filled by a group larger than any one person. Over time, I realized this truth. The church had become my mother.

I grew up at a very normal church of about three hundred or four hundred people. If you’d driven past it, nothing would have stood out to you. We met in a brick building. We had one of those old signs where you could put up the sermon title or a cliché message such as “CH _ _ CH What’s missing?” If you’d visited a service, very little would have stood out. We sang hymns and took Communion. A kind, generous preacher told Reader’s Digest–type tales and encouraged us with Bible stories and verses. From an outside perspective, it probably would have all looked ordinary. Yet for me, it was family.

When I walked into my church building, I walked into a room full of uncles and aunts. In fact, I called many of them by those names, despite no blood relation. Everyone knew my name, and I knew their names. People smiled when they saw me. I loved being there. My buddies and I played lots of games around the church building. Once the adults were out in the vestibule talking after worship, we’d throw bouncy balls from the back of the auditorium and aim for the baptistry. If you ricocheted it in there, you got a point. If you got a clear splash with no bank, you got five points. An older member, Mr. Gifford, would confiscate our ball and scold us. Yet, we knew he cared about us. My childhood consisted of church potlucks, church cookouts, and church camp. I learned to hit the potluck line early before the Kentucky Fried Chicken ran out. I messed around with my friends and drank entirely too much Kool-Aid. On summer nights at church camp, we’d sing under the stars. It all felt so perfect, so edenic. I remember a song called, “Holy Father Grant Us Peace.” We’d sing it right before bed. I don’t know how we sounded, but to my childish ears, it sounded like angels. Surprising to me, God was granting me peace. I missed my mom, and yet I had my people. I felt welcome. If you wonder what it’s like to grow up with hundreds of people that think you’re awesome and hug you weekly, I can tell you. It’s incredible. In fact, to this day, I feel most welcome and comfortable with the church.

To my surprise and dismay, as I entered college, I realized not everyone had that relational support growing up. I faced the truth that not everyone had healthy and positive church experiences. This devastated me. In fact, I count this realization as one of the greatest disappointments of my adult life. I don’t know where I’d be without the support of the church. When I think that others not only didn’t receive support but received harm, I’m sad beyond measure. Growing up, I’d been aware of my church’s imperfections, even sins. Still, the good always seemed to outweigh the bad. Tragically, I realized that for many the bad had outweighed the good.

Believe me, I know the evils committed by the church, and I will not neglect them in these pages. Confession and repentance have taken place and must continue. Still, in my life, the church has always been there to meet me in my pain and loneliness. In the following pages, I will share the true stories of what this has looked like in my life. Many say that they were raised in the church. I say more than that. I was raised by the church. If I didn’t have the church in my life, my life would have an enormous void.

In these pages, I want to make a bold claim. The church is the greatest social movement the world has ever known. The church offers a broad, comprehensive social web in a way unlike any other social grouping. To some, it will seem cliché or naïve. To others, it will seem utopian or idealistic. Still, spiritual community distinguishes itself from all other forms of social community. No other social group can give us community like a spiritual community—not our families, not our government/nation, and not our activism or hobby collectives. In normal, ordinary churches in your neighborhood, you can find spiritual family. You can find your people who will have your back.

Making this claim involves moving against the tide. While Jesus remains popular, the church’s reputation has declined. In my life, I’ve witnessed the good, bad, an...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Section 1: Broken
• Section 2: Beautiful
• Section 3: Broken, Beautiful, and Worth it
• Bibliography